“Occupying” the Museum of Sex, 20 artists “who have pushed notions of propriety into provocation on the street” — or, their stuff has lots of tits, many dicks — have brought their work inside, most notably the William Thomas Porter and Andrew H. Shirley “Fuck Bike #001.” It’s been to Basel. It’s been in a lot of places. It’s a sculptural, bike-hybrid system of pedals, chains, tires and a prosthetic phallus that does what you think it does. Watch the NSFW video. Read more »
Active-Duty Soldiers Slump Their Heads
The “Soldier” series by Suzanne Opton was previously featured and gigantic billboards in nine US cities and set off enough people to spark a debate about the image of America’s military. Read more »
I’ll say it again, Kris Kuksi’s sculptures need to be seen in person. See all the obsessive sculptural nuances by the modern Rococo master up close. Don’t just squint at the .jpgs but come and walk up to these floating islands, dripping in details, blooming with guns barrels, anachronistic soldiers, machines in decay. What is it about growing up lonely in rural Kansas in a broken home that makes one make stuff like this? Beats us. See the freshest, like the mythical-themed first three above at: Kris Kuksi, “Triumph,” Mar 8 – Apr 7, Joshua Liner Gallery, NYC
David LaChapelle’s “Earth Laughs in Flowers” series takes from the Dutch Masters’ still life and its opulent piles of fruit, only, his throws in some signifiers of the modern age that “explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility of humanity.” It’s all vapid hues of pink and yellow, plasticine sheen and nothing subtle: Silicone assholes, Vienna sausages, blooming, flowers, wet fruit, a praying mantis, blood-splattered wine-glasses, more flowers, more fruit, clouds of cigarette ash, Cheetos, junk, a toy airplane, a burning American flag. See them for the first time on US soil at “David LaChapelle: Earth Laughs in Flowers,” Feb 23 – Mar 24, Fred Torres Collaborations, NYC
A one-man trailer park, old hippies in the desert, a monk in a ghost town — Alec Soth traveled 20,000 miles tracking these modern-day hermits for the mysterious, unsettling series Broken Manual. These men trust Soth. They leave their caves and cabins and pose for portraits. They show off their make-shift huts, home-made shivs and lonely rubber fuck holes. They just want to be left alone. Gawk at them with this highly anticipated New York show at the Sean Kelly Gallery. The accompanying road trip documentary Somewhere to Disappear plays hourly. “Broken Manual,” Alec Soth, Feb 3 – Mar 11, Sean Kelly Gallery, NYC
Throughout the 1950′s, Greenpoint-born bank-industry dude Frank Oscar Larson was handy with the Rolleiflex, capturing “the life of the streets” and “candid portraits of working stiffs” on his weekends. Culled from a recently uncovered hoard of thousands of unseen negatives, the Queens Museum of Art’s exhibition features shots from Chinatown to the Hell’s Kitchen to Times Square to Central Park, with ladies with gams and street urchins without teeth and Brando still in theaters. Don’t even try to feign nostalgia on this one. You’re not that old. “Frank Oscar Larson: 1950s New York Street Stories,” Feb 5 – May 20, Queens Museum of Art, Queens
Lovesody: A Tokyo Love of Affair With a Young Single Mother
When Tokyo-born photographer Motoyuki Daifu met this girl, she was twenty, with a two-year-old kid and pregnant with another. “I fell in love with her at first sight” … for six months. “I had never met a girl like her — a girl full of motherly love.” See the photographic record of their brief but deep affair at Lombard Freid Projects and you’ll feel like a voyeur. NSFW. Read more »
David Shrigley is a fucked up gentleman in the most wonderful way and frankly, I’m obsessed with him. He’s really an artist, but it all bleeds into genres of animation and books and his big upcoming solo show at the Hayward Gallery is better previewed by this trailer. Read more »
This Unreal Estate serigraph series by Austin-based artist Tim Doyle takes you to Moe’s, the Seinfeld diner and all other “locations” you’ve been going to for decades, but not really. Or yes, really. Don’t pretend that these works with their bold hues and heavy, comic-book lines don’t conjure up a chummy feeling of familiarity. “These places are in our memories transmitted and entrenched there through a cathode-ray tube,” from the time you zombied out in front of your parents’ rickety television circa Simpsons’ first season, to the time you… zombied out in front of your Megaupload stream of the Simpsons’ fifteenth season. Ah, life, huh? “Unreal Estate,” Tim Doyle, Feb 2 – Feb 23, Spoke Art Gallery, San Francisco.
Remember the Owl Cave of Twin Peaks? Agent Cooper was really plodding about the Bronson Caves in Griffith Park, not too far from AFI, because alum David Lynch didn’t stray. Those were some busy caves. From Batman to Gunsmoke, decades of film and television production units scampered in those rocky crevices and now, photographer Brice Bischoff. These ephemeral, organic blurs result from long-exposure photography and “experimental” movement in the Bronson Caves. Daytime light-painting! Film fetishism! Uh… swishing colorful rags around. All in good fun: “Bronson Caves,” Brice Bischoff, Mar – Apr, Kopeikin Gallery, Culver City
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